e or no thought for
aught save affairs of state; and I was as the page who loved her, and
whom she might have loved in return if she had been but a simple
gentlewoman. Once more I told myself that I would be content if I could
only play the page's part, and serve her in life and death, "_a la vie
et a la mort_" as the new password ran; but how was I even to begin
doing that?

An unanswerable question! I must just go on blindly, as Fate led me; and
Fate at this moment was prosaically represented by Mishka. Great Scott,
how he snored!

We were astir early; I seemed to have just fallen asleep when Mishka
roused me and announced that breakfast was waiting, and the horses
ready.

We rode swiftly, and for the most part in silence, as my companion was
even less communicative than usual. I noticed, as we drew near to
Zostrov, a change for the better in the aspect of the country and the
people. The last twenty versts was over an excellent road, while the
streets of the village where we found our change of horses waiting, and
of two others beyond, were comparatively clean and well-kept, with
sidewalks laid with wooden blocks. The huts were more weather-tight and
comfortable,--outside at any rate. The land was better cultivated, too,
and the _moujiks_, though most of them scowled evilly at us, looked
better fed and better clothed than any we had seen before. They all wore
high boots,--a sure sign of prosperity. Yesterday boots were the
exception, and most of the people, both men and women, were shod with a
kind of moccasin made of plaited grass, and had their limbs swathed in
ragged strips of cloth kept clumsily in place with grass-string.

"It is his doing," Mishka condescended to explain. "His and my father's.
He gives the word and the money, and my father and those under him do
the rest. They try to teach these lazy swine to work for their own
sakes,--to make the best of their land; it is to further that end that
all the new gear is coming. They will have the use of it--these
pigs--for nothing. They will not even give thanks; rather will they turn
and bite the hand that helps them; that tries to raise them out of the
mud in which they wallow!"

He spat vigorously, as a kind of corollary to his remarks.

As he spoke we were skirting a little pine wood just beyond the village,
and a few yards further the road wound clear of the trees and out across
an open plain, in the centre of which rose a huge, square building of
gray